Introduction

More Thunderbird tests

In our first Thunderbird article, we reported on the performance of this processor with NVIDIA's GeForce 2 GTS graphics chip. However, tests with other video cards were also performed.

Since the article was getting long, we decided to leave the other graphics cards out of the preview. Therefore, for this article we wanted to discuss in greater detail our experience with the Thunderbird system and how well it stood up to our tests.

Besides the GeForce 2, we also conducted tests with the GeForce DDR, Voodoo5 5500, and Voodoo3 graphics cards. We only had time for a day of testing so we figured the latest cards from NVIDIA and 3dfx were the boards our readers were most interested in seeing.

Stability with all four cards was excellent; we didn't encounter a single lockup or crash during any of our tests. As we mentioned in the Thunderbird preview, all tests were conducted in AGP 2X mode, AGP 4X didn't work properly with the motherboard we used for Thunderbird testing.

If you didn't read the preview article, the Thunderbird motherboard we tested with was based on VIA's KT133 chipset and was manufactured by FIC for Compaq Computer Corporation.

The motherboard featured a universal AGP slot, 5 PCI slots, and 3 DIMM sockets; there were no ISA slots or an AMR slot. Below is a picture of the motherboard for reference.

The Thunderbird motherboard

Video issues

We were told by AMD's Technical Marketing Engineer Tom Renish that the system sometimes fails to display a video signal during system reboot and that the problem was remedied with a quick press of the reset button.

Little did we know just how often we'd have to use the reset button to get a video signal. Only the GeForce 2 card (an AMD-supplied LeadTek WinFast GeForce 2 GTS card) didn't require this solution.